


Yuletide

by daylighthour



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Arthur-centric, Camelot, Christmas, Feast, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Gifts, Hurt/Comfort, Presents, Sick Arthur, Slash if you squint, Winter, Winter fic, Yule, Yuletide, banquet, beneath it all arthur cares, caring!merlin, holiday theme, hurt Arthur, or are really looking for it, stories, themed-fic, winter in camelot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 21:06:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17108132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daylighthour/pseuds/daylighthour
Summary: It is the annual Yule feast, Arthur is sick, Merlin is attentive, and both are surprised at how much they care about each other.





	Yuletide

**Author's Note:**

> In keeping with my little tradition of stories inspired by holidays in the Celtic Pagan tradition, here is a fic in honor of Yule/The Winter Solstice. Enjoy!

Arthur’s chambers were cast in a red half-light by the flames flickering in the hearth when Merlin stumbled into the room, Arthur’s arm wound around him. The soft echo of music and the rumble of conversation wafted down the corridor behind them, before Merlin heaved the great wooden door shut, and with a thud all was silent.

  
“Would you like a bath, sire?” Merlin offered. “It would be hot in moments. I’ve stoked the fire high.” And this much was true; Merlin had left the feast to build the fire when he had glimpsed Arthur’s resolve (and the load of potions Gaius had poured down his throat prior to the feast) wearing thin midway through the course of roast pheasant. All so that the prince’s chambers wouldn’t be full of the chill that permeated the castle walls.

  
Arthur shook his head. “Just bed, Merlin,” his voice a croaking whisper. Even in the room’s twilight cast Merlin saw every inch of him, every muscle and every line, was etched with exhaustion. With such a chill as he had, Merlin wished Uther would have made an allowance just this once and let Arthur miss the Yule feast. But Uther was a man of tradition and prestige, and it would have sent the wrong message to visiting nobles not to have the crown prince in attendance, or so he had said. And of course, Arthur never argued with his father.

  
“Come to bed then,” Merlin said, ushering Arthur along, but the prince shook off his servant’s hand, suddenly stubborn even though Merlin had supported him all the way to the chambers.

  
“I can walk myself,” Arthur said, but he barely took a step forward before he doubled over in a fit of coughing, his face going red and his eyes watering.

  
Merlin patted his back, and wrapped his arm around Arthur's waist once more. “Gaius made a balm to soothe your chest. Once you’re in bed, I’ll apply it.”

  
Merlin supported Arthur, who was swaying almost drunkenly from the effort of such a long day of ritual and feasting. With Arthur's side pressed up against him, Merlin could feel him shiver, a slight tremble even through his banquet cloak. A wave of sympathy washed over Merlin; his friend must truly be feeling awful.

  
Once Merlin had Arthur seated on the edge of his bed, he unfastened Arthur’s cloak and removed it from around his shoulders. Arthur groaned softly, involuntarily, at the loss of heat as his shivers doubled, and the groan caught in his throat. He was sent into a fit of coughing, which he did his best to stifle with a clenched jaw. Merlin pushed his shoulder gently.   
“Lie down and undo your tunic. I'll be right back.”

  
Merlin stowed the cloak safely back in the prince’s drawers, frowning to himself when Arthur kept coughing, seemingly unable to stop. He went back to Arthur's bedside, fetching the small jar of mint balm Gaius had sent. Arthur had undone the laces on the front of his tunic, exposing his bare chest, damp with sweat. Merlin dipped his fingers in the balm and slipped his hand between the fabric. Arthur was still coughing, though he turned his head away from Merlin.

  
Merlin frowned at the hot skin of Arthur’s chest, and moved his palm to rest on Arthur's forehead. “Your fever’s gotten worse,” he said. “I knew the banquet was a bad idea.”

  
Arthur gasped put words between bone-rattling coughs, trying to sound as full of princely anger as he could. “Just get... the bloody.. balm.”

  
“Shh, here.” Merlin stroked the blond fringe back off Arthur's forehead and poured him a cup of warm honey milk, another provision he had procured when building the fire earlier. “This will soothe your throat.”

  
Merlin worked in the balm as Arthur drank voraciously from the cup. When he had finished, Merlin took it from him. “Better?”   
Arthur nodded, swiping the back of his hand across his eyes and taking a careful, ragged breath.

  
“Sit up a bit, I’ll put some on your neck and back, too.”

  
Arthur let him, complying languidly with Merlin’s maneuvering him upright and stacking pillows behind his back now that the cough had abated. The light was poor but still Arthur’s flushed cheeks, his shadowed eyes, were visible. He really was ill, and Merlin, not for the first time, felt a tiny wisp of anger burn in his belly at Uther’s unwillingness to yield to a physician’s advice to keep his son in bed. Merlin swallowed the flicker down; it would not help him any.

  
Arthur drew him back to the present with a sneeze, then another. “Handkerchiefs,” Merlin said aloud, and stalked to the bureau to retrieve some.

  
Arthur sniffed. “And more blankets,” he croaked. “It's freezing in here.”

  
Merlin clucked his tongue as he rifled through bunches of cloth. “My, but you're _whiny_ when you're ill.”

  
Though his back was turned, Merlin could hear the glower in Arthur's voice, congestion and all. “You would be too if you were dying.”

  
Merlin rolled his eyes. “You're not dying, Arthur.”

  
“When I come back to haunt you at Samhain I'll say I told you so.”

  
“Here.” Merlin pressed the handkerchiefs into Arthur's hands, secretly pleased when he abandoned the conversation to tend to his nose. While Merlin was glad to hear Arthur trying to joke as usual, he didn't like it when the man spoke so freely, so lightly of his own death.

  
Arthur started to cough again, and Merlin passed him another goblet, full of cool water this time. “I’ll send for more cough syrup from Gaius. He says you're not to have more until morning, but I'll see if he won't change his mind. You're downright miserable, aren't you?”

  
Arthur nodded, and so Merlin sent word with a guard in the hall. When he re-entered, shutting the door again, he went to Arthur’s bedside. Arthur rubbed at his nose with a balled up handkerchief in his fist, sneezed three times in succession, and blew his nose.

  
“Merlin,” he said, peaking around the handkerchief. “I almost forgot. I have a gift for you.”

  
Merlin snickered. “If this is a ruse to get me to clean up your snotty handkerchiefs…”

  
But Arthur shook his head and cleared his throat tiredly. “No, Merlin. It's for Yule.” Arthur shut his eyes. “Was going to give it to you earlier. Go get it.”

  
Still not entirely convinced Arthur wasn’t trying to joke with him, Merlin responded with a quip. “I have to fetch my own presents now, too?”

  
“Can't be arsed to get up.”

  
The prince truly looked exhausted, swaddled in blankets and pillows. Merlin swallowed a bit of guilt and softened his tone. “Alright, where is it?”

  
Eyes still shut, Arthur waved his hand ambiguously. “In the corner, behind the curtains and the boards.”

  
Merlin started for the area in question. “Why on earth would it be here?”

  
“I had to hide it where you'd never clean. So really, I could have hidden it anywhere.”

  
“Very funny,” Merlin said, peeling back curtains, sticking his head behind the dressing boards, even feeling between the cracks in the castle walls. “But there's nothing here. I swear, if you're having me on..."

  
“I'm not! It's in the corner.”

  
Merlin dropped to his hands and knees, throwing dignity to the wind as he crawled the length of the wall on all fours. Thank God Arthur was too fevered to hurl an insult. He pushed the changing boards aside, double checked the curtains, even pulled on a floorboard or two to see if they were loose. “I don't see anything.”

  
“For God’s sake…” With an angry huff Arthur got up from his bed, cocooning himself in a bundle of blankets. He stalked to the tiny wooden cupboard in the wall where the hair brushes were kept, and of course he flung that open because Merlin really hadn’t cleaned there once. He forgot the cupboard existed most days. Arthur reached in and pulled out a folded, furry bundle, which he dropped into Merlin’s hands. “Here.”

  
All the speaking had taken its toll on Arthur’s throat, and he was thrown into a coughing fit that seemed to take control of his entire body. He flung out an arm, desperately searching for something to grab to steady himself as he doubled over, and Merlin offered his shoulder. With his other hand, Merlin rubbed his back through the blankets. “Alright, back to bed with you.”

  
Once Merlin had corralled Arthur back to bed and tucked him in with blankets and pillows, Arthur regarded him intensely through red-rimmed, watery eyes. “Unfold it.”

  
Merlin did so, and his jaw dropped. It was a cloak of deep indigo, trimmed on the inside and the hood with plush, luxurious fur. Merlin ran his finger along the fabric, smooth and congruent, not a patchwork of whatever rough cloth could be thrown together as were the rest of his clothing. Real brass buttons, shining like stars, held the cloak together in the middle.

  
“Arthur,” Merlin breathed, his voice a whisper. “Is this for me?”

  
“No, it’s for the horses.”

  
“Arthur…”

  
“Put it on.”

  
Merlin slipped the cloak around his shoulders, and it fit him perfectly. It felt like an embrace from the softest, warmest pillows in the world. Arthur looked as pleased as Merlin had ever seen him, his chapped lips settling into a soft grin, which he immediately lost upon realizing Merlin was looking at him.

  
“Was this an old cloak of yours tailored to fit me?”

  
“If you paid _any attention at all_ to your job as my manservant, you would know I’ve never owned anything of the sort.”

  
Merlin gaped. “So this was commissioned?”

  
“That’s a big word, Merlin.”

  
“I’m serious, Arthur. This must have cost a fortune and--How did you know the measurements?”

  
“I have my sources.”

  
Merlin would have pressed him more had a knock on the door not come at that moment. A serving girl had come with the requested syrup as well as a jug of spiced wine Gaius had smuggled out from the feast. Merlin blessed the old man silently.

  
“Cough syrup and wine for the prince,” Merlin announced. “Open up, you big prat.”

  
Surprisingly, Arthur did not protest but opened his mouth and let Merlin spoon feed him the medicine, a testament to how truly awful he felt. He winced as he swallowed, from pain or taste or both, and Merlin couldn't help but do soft, fussy things like brush Arthur's hair back off his forehead, check his fever, fluff the pillows.

  
He had just handed Arthur the wine when Merlin paused, his gaze drifting back to the cloak and the beside chair upon which he had slung it carefully. “Arthur, wait,” he said slowly. “Royalty aren't supposed to give their servants gifts.”

  
“You're not supposed to question me and yet you do that all the time.”

  
Guilt gnawed fiercely at the edges of his stomach; Arthur was not supposed to make him feel this way. “I didn’t get anything for you.”

  
Arthur flapped his hand tiredly. “‘S alright. I didn’t expect you to.”

  
With that phrase, spoken so quiet and resigned, Merlin's heart shattered entirely. “Arthur--”

  
“Stop sounding so heartbroken. You girl’s petticoat.”

  
Merlin caressed the fur lining gently, almost lovingly. “I can’t wear this, Arthur. It’s too nice, and I’m just a servant.”

  
Merlin swore he saw Arthur mouth ‘not just a servant’, but as such what he said was, “It’s for you to wear on hunts, and the knights won’t mind.”

  
Merlin felt a slight wetness prick at the corner of his eyes, and it suddenly became quite hard to swallow. “This is the nicest gift anyone’s ever given me, and I--I don’t know how to thank you properly.”

  
“You can start by stopping your girlish nattering and letting me sleep,” Arthur murmured, face down, his voice muffled by the pillows.

  
“Right,” Merlin blinked--for a moment he had been so swept up he had forgotten Arthur was ill. “Of course.” He gathered up the cloak, poured Arthur another goblet of wine and another cup of water which he left on the bedside table, checked when Arthur sneezed again to make sure the prince had enough handkerchiefs. He wet a cloth and wiped it a couple times over the Arthur’s hot forehead, and Arthur looked at him dazedly but gratefully. He made sure the covers were neatly tucked around Arthur, letting his hands linger on the prince’s chest when a warm feeling took hold of his own body.

  
Merlin leaned back, ready now to let his friend sleep, but Arthur caught him by the wrist. “Tell me a Yule story.”

  
Merlin blinked, his cheeks flushing red against his will. “A Yule story? I don't know any Yule stories.”

  
“Make one up then,” Arthur said, too tired to keep his eyes open any longer. “Father used to tell them every year at the end of the feast. Might be telling one now.”

  
At once Merlin understood, and at that moment it wasn’t hard to imagine Arthur as a young boy, feverish and unwell, begging for someone to stay the night with him. To tell him a story, to sit with him during this longest night and make sure Arthur knew he wasn’t alone, was the least Merlin could do for him, really.

  
Merlin pulled the chair closer to Arthur’s bed and relaxed into it. For a moment, he thought, the stories his mother used to tell him jumbling and jostling together in his memory, but then his lips just started moving. “Once upon a time, in a kingdom ruled by a powerful king, there lived a wizard--”

  
“Oh, a wizard,” Arthur mumbled, half asleep already. “Father wouldn't like this one.”

  
“Hush, your father isn't here.” Merlin said, stroking his fingers gently through the prince’s hair. Arthur made a contented, almost purring noise. “There lived a wizard and his friend. The wizard would do anything on earth for his friend, and the wizard knew his friend would do the same for him. One year at Yule, after the sun had long since set…”

  
Merlin stayed like this, stroking Arthur’s hair with one hand and the fur of his cloak with the other, until long after the prince’s breathing had deepened into soft, congested snores. Despite his prince being asleep, or perhaps because of it, Merlin spoke the story, weaving in his own confessions of magic and every secret he wished he could tell his dearest friend until the long, solstice night broke into dawn at last. 


End file.
